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1917 

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\ SENATE \^%T'^- 

issb'iun ) \ No. 68-: 



A LEAGUE FOR PEACE 



ADDRESS 



PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

/I 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNITED STATES SENATE ON JANUARY 

22, 1917, SUBMITTING CERTAIN CONDITIONS UPON WHICH 

THIS GOVERNMENT WOULD FEEL JUSTIFIED IN 

APPROVING ITS FORMAL AND SOLEMN 

ADHERENCE TO A LEAGUE 

FOR PEACE 




January 22, 1917. — Referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations 
and ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRIMTING OFFICE 

1917 



D« of D» 
JAN 24 1917 



(VI ■ 



4> 



-^ 



A LEAGUE FOR PEACE. 



Gentlemen of the Senate : On the eighteenth of December hist I 
addressed an identic note to the governments of the nations now at 
war requesting them to state, more definitely than they had j'^et 
been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which 
they would deem it possible to make peace. I spoke on behalf of 
humanity and of the rights of all neutral nations like our own, 
many of whose most vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy. 
The Central Powers united in a reply which stated merely that they 
were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms 
of peace. The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely 
and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definite- 
ness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of 
reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of 
a satisfactory settlement. We are that much nearer a definite dis- 
cussion of the peace which shall end the present war. We are that 
much nearer the discussion of the international concert which must 
thereafter hold the world at peace. In every discussion of the peace 
that must end this war it is taken for granted that that peace must 
be followed by some definite concert of power which will make it 
virtuall}^ impossible that any such catastrophe should ever over- 
whelm us again. Every lover of mankind, every sane and thought- 
ful man must take that for granted. 

I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought 
that I owed it to jow, as the council associated with me in the final de- 
termination of our international obligations, to disclose to you with- 
out reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in 
my mind in regard to the duty of our Government in the da3's to 
come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan 
the foimdations of peace among the nations. 

It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should 
play no part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service 
will be the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare them- 
selves by the very principles and purposes of their polity and the 
approved practices of their Government ever since the days when 
they set up a new nation in the high and honourable hope that it 
might in all that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. 

3 



4 A LEAGUE FOE PEACE. 

They cannot in honour withhold the service to which they are now 
about to be challenged. They do not wish to withhold it. But they 
owe it to themselves and to the other nations of the world to state 
the conditions under which they will feel free to render it. 

That service is nothing less than this, to add their authority and 
their power to the authority and force of other nations to guarantee 
X)eace and justice throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot 
now be long postponed. It is right that before it comes this Gov- 
ernment should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it 
would feel justified in asking our people to approve its formal and 
solemn adlierence to a League for Peace. I am here to attempt to 
state those conditions. 

The present war must first be ended; but Ave owe it to candour 
and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far 
as our participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned, it 
makes a great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms 
it is ended. The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end 
must embody terms which will create a peace that is worth guar- 
anteeing and preserving, a peace that will win the approval of man- 
kind, not merely a peace that will serve the several interests and 
immediate aims of the nations engaged. We shall have no voice in 
determining what those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have 
a voice in determining whether they shall be made lasting or not by 
the guarantees of a universal covenant; and our judgment upon what 
is fundamental and essential as a condition precedent to permanency 
should be spoken now, not afterwards when it may be too late. 

No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include the peoples 
of the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war; 
and yet there is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America 
could join in guaranteeing. The elements of that peace must be ele- 
ments that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of the 
American governments, elements consistent with their political faith 
and with the practical convictions which the peoples of America have 
once for all embraced and undertaken to defend. 

I do not mean to say that any American government would throw 
any obstacle in the way of any terms of peace the governments now 
at war might agree upon, or seek to upset them when made, Avhat- 
ever they might be. I only take it for granted that mere terms of 
peace between the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents 
themselves. Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will 
be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the 
permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any 
nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected 
that no nation, no probable combination of nations could face or 
withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is to endure, it 



A LEAGUE FOR PEACE. 5 

must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of man- 
kind. 

The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine 
whether it is a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured. 
The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the 
world depends is this : Is the present war a struggle for a just and 
secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a 
struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can 
guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a 
tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a bal- 
ance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, 
but an organized common peace. 

Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances on this 
point. The statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed 
against one another have said, in terms that could not be misinter- 
preted, that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush 
their antagonists. But the implications of these assurances may not 
be equally clear to all, — may not be the same on both sides of the 
water. I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what 
we understand them to be. 

They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace Avithout victory. 
It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put 
my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that 
no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to 
face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory 
would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed 
upon the vanquished. It Avould be accepted in humiliation, under 
duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resent- 
ment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not 
permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between 
equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality 
and a common participation in a common benefit. The right state 
of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a 
lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory 
or of racial and national allegiance. 

The equality of nations upon Avhich peace must be founded if it 
is to last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged 
must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations 
and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. 
Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the 
individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will 
depend. Equality of territory or of resources there of course cannot 
be; nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peace- 
ful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no 
one asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights. 



6 A LEAGUE FOK PEACE. 

Mankind is looking iiow for freedom of life, not for equipoises of 
power. 

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right 
among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which 
does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive 
all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no 
right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to 
sovereignty as if they were property. T take it for granted, for 
instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen 
everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, 
and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of 
life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be 
guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power 
of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own, 

I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an abstract po- 
litical principle which has always been held very dear by those who 
have sought to build up liberty in America, but for the same reason 
that I have spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem to 
me clearly indispensable, — because I wish frankly to uncover reali- 
ties. Any peace which does not recognize and accept this principle 
will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the 
convictions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole populations 
will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all the world will 
sympathize. The world can be at peace only if its life is stable, and 
there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there 
is not tranquility of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of 
right. 

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling 
towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should 
be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where 
this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt bo 
done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general 
guarantee which will assure the peace itself. With a right comity 
of arrangement no nation need be shut away from free access to the 
open j)aths of the world's commerce. 

And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. 
The freedom of the seas is the si7ie qua non of peace, equality, and 
cooperation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many 
of the rules of international practice hitherto thovight to be estab- 
lished ma}^ be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and 
common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but 
the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. There 
can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world with- 
out them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations 
is an essential i^art of the process of peace and of development, life 



A LEAGUE FOR PEACE. 7 

need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the 
seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an 
agreement concerning it. 

It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval 
armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the world in keep- 
ing the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting 
naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult ques- 
tion of the limitation of armies and of all i^rogrammes of military 
preparation. Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must 
be faced with the utmost candour and decided in a spirit of real 
accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings, and 
come to stay. Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. 
There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if 
great preponderating armaments are henceforth to continue here and 
there to be built up and maintained. The statesmen of the world 
must plan for peace and nations must adjust and accommodate their 
policy to it as they have planned for war and made ready for pitiless 
contest and rivalry. The question of armaments, whether on land 
or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question 
connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind. 

I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with 
the utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary 
if the world's yearning desire for peace was anyAvhere to find free 
voice and utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high au- 
thority amongst all the peoples of the world who is at liberty to 
speak and hold nothing back. I am speaking as an individual, and 
yet I am speaking also, of course, as the responsible head of a gTeat 
government, and I feel confident that I have said what the people 
of the United States would wish me to say. May I not add that 
I hope and believe that I am in effect speaking for liberals and 
friends of humanity in every nation and of every programme of 
liberty ? I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass 
of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity 
to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they 
see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold 
most dear. 

And in holding out the expectation that the people and Govern- 
ment of the United States will join the other civilized nations of 
the world in guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms 
as I have named I speak with the greater boldness and confidence 
because it is clear to every man who can think that there is in this 
promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as a nation, 
but a fulfilment, rather, of all that we have professed or striven for. 

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one 
accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as tfie doctrine of 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



8 A LEAGUE FOR PEACE. I 

the world: that no nation shoiikl seek to extend it& i-^-.^vj w,tx. unj 
other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to 
determine its ovrn polity, its own way of development, unhindered, 
unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful. 

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling 
alliances which would draw them into competitions of power, catch 
them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivahy, and disturb their own 
affairs with influences intruded from without. There is no entangling 
alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense 
and with the same purpose all act in the common interest and are 
free to live their own lives under a common protection. 

I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that 
freedom of the seas which in international conference after confer- 
ence representatives of the United States have urged with the elo- 
quence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty ; and that 
moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power 
for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish 
violence. 

These are American principles, American policies. We could 
stand for no others. And they are also the principles and policies 
of forward looking men and women everywhere, of every modern 
nation, of every enlightened community. They are the principles of 
mankind and must prevail. 

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